


The Last of Their Kind

by rivendellrose



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Alien Sex, F/M, Post-Time War, Smut, Time War Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-01
Updated: 2017-01-01
Packaged: 2018-09-13 19:47:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,540
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9139633
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rivendellrose/pseuds/rivendellrose
Summary: Originally written for sprink_kinkfest on Livejournal back in February of 2008.After the Time War, the Doctor is alone and horny.  The Tardis wants to help.





	

The trouble was, he was alone.

He’d been alone before, for even a few long stretches of time, although he suspected they’d felt longer than they’d actually been. Still, time being a relative thing, it was the feeling of length that had counted. In any event, he was more alone now than he had ever conceived of being in the past, and the absence of his people tugged constantly at the back of his mind like a muscle-cramp he couldn’t seem to stretch out.

The worst of it was... Well, it wasn’t really the _worst_ , he told himself. The worst was that they were dead. The worst was that he’d killed them. But sometimes he thought - only in the dark parts of his mind, in the spaces he tried to ignore, and only then when he couldn’t stop the thought popping unbidden into his mind - the worst of it, the most hideous, horrible, embarrassing part of the whole situation was that he’d never again enjoy the companionship that can only be properly found with a member of one’s own species. 

He leaned back against the central column of the Tardis and snorted at the arrogance of those words. “’Companionship’,” he grumbled. “Why not come out with it? I can’t have _sex._ ”

He hadn’t wasted a great deal of thought on sexual relations throughout his long life. The sex drive in a Time Lord wasn’t like the constant drum beating in the background of a Human’s mind. It came and went in its time. He’d had his youthful indiscretions in his first body, and later given his contribution to the continuation of the species, and then as that body had grown old (and grown away from Gallifrey), he’d more or less forgotten the pleasures of the body for a while. In succeeding regenerations he’d stolen a few moments, grasped onto a small fistful of unions that brought both contentment and joy. During the war he’d forgotten all of that again in the rush for victory, and then merely for survival. The last time he’d seen Romana, they’d tried briefly to rekindle their centuries-old romance, locked away in her presidential chambers. In the end, they’d only leaned against each other, hands twined, watching the suns rise over the capital - for the last time, as it turned out. 

He’d thought he was done forever with sexual desire. It should have been burned out of him, after all he’d seen during the war. His body seemed to have other ideas, though. Now that it was all over, now that he was completely alone and wanted nothing more than never to think of his physical comfort again, his body had rediscovered its sense of irony. It betrayed him all the time with a niggling, aching desire that insinuated itself into his daily routine and the few, resented hours of sleep he gave in to when he couldn’t stay awake for another day.

And of course, there wasn’t anyone to help him work the feelings to completion.

Masturbation wasn’t a workable option. He’d tried, after discovering the entirely foreign concept among Humans, and discovered to his (then only mild) frustration that this was one of the hidden differences between Time Lords and his favorite young species. It wasn’t that Time Lords hadn’t thought of self-pleasuring, but rather that it didn’t work for them. Another way they’d designed themselves over their ancient past to be essentially communal creatures - without the touch of another telepath in his mind, he couldn’t get off. And that did certainly leave him in a spot, now, didn’t it? 

“I wonder if we can die from it?” he asked the empty Tardis. “Nobody’s ever found out before. No Time Lord’s ever been completely alone.”

Well... Not completely. 

The Tardis was still there - a constant presence in his mind, flitting in and out of his consciousness like movement viewed through deep water, masked by reflection from the sky above. Throughout the war his sense for her mind had grown stronger than ever before, and now... Maybe it was just that there wasn’t any other telepathic ‘noise’ to block her, but he felt intensely aware of his ship in a way he’d rarely noticed before.

_Not alone_ , she whispered in his mind. 

“No. You’re here.” He patted the column beside him, fond and comforting. “But that’s a bit different, you know?”

_It does not have to be._

He slept little - less even than was normal for a Time Lord - but when he did fall asleep, he dreamed of Romana. She was beautiful, exactly as he remembered her from the time long before the war consumed everything, and in the dream they walked alongside a river in the countryside near Cambridge. She laughed and said something that got lost in the wind, but her mind was clear and full of thoughts of sex. He pulled down with him onto the grass, kissing her, and let her straddle his hips, her grey skirt twisting shamelessly over her knees. She licked his neck, and her hands unbuttoned his shirt... or maybe they just pushed up under his jumper, he wasn’t sure. He wasn’t even sure what body he was wearing, but in the dream it didn’t matter. He was him, and she was her, and regenerations were just window-dressing. He let her undress him, enjoying the way the wind tousled her hair and the sun lit it with gold, like the glow of the Eye of the Tardis. That was a funny thing to think of at that time, he thought, but he forgot about it when Romana unbuckled his belt, unzipped his trousers, and took his cock in her hand. 

That feeling was perfect - warm and solid and... and too real for a dream.

The Doctor’s eyes snapped open and stared into Romana’s, the same Romana he’d seen in his dreams. But it couldn’t be her, it couldn’t be real, because Romana was _dead_ , and the only one left was...

The Tardis’s mind-touch, fond and familiar, smoothed over his synapses. Didn’t he want to have sex? her mind asked. His mind wanted to. 

“How did you do that?” he asked out loud. “How did you... you’ve taken a humanoid shape _inside_ yourself, how’d you do that?”

It was not difficult, he sensed. She found it amusing that he should think it would be. After all, she changed the shape of her control room and other interiors all the time, didn’t she, and replicated all manner of complicated shapes? Taking humanoid form - particularly the form of one of her former passengers - was comparatively simple.

“You can’t do that,” he told the ship firmly.

“Why not?” she asked aloud. The voice was right, too, of course - the Tardis was using Romana’s voice patterns, the record of everything she’d ever spoken within the ship’s confines, stored in her knowledge base for reference if they were ever needed, and extrapolating from them. Romana’s naked body sat back on her heels and tilted her head at him, obviously bemused. “I can look like her, why can I not be her for you?”

“Because it’s not right. She wouldn’t... you can’t just use her shape like that. It’s not right,” he repeated, feeling somewhat helpless. 

“She did,” the image of Romana pointed out, relentlessly logical. “When she needed a new form, she took the shape of the girl Princess Astra, the seventh segment of the Key to Time.” 

“Yeah, well, that wasn’t right either,” the Doctor groused. “And I told her so.” But she hadn’t listened. Romana had never been much for listening to other people, particularly to him, once she’d made up her mind on something. Just as reckless as him, in her way. Again, he felt a pang at the memory of her loss.

“And now you’ve told me the same,” the Tardis informed him primly. “Your duty is done, and I choose to retain this shape just as she did.” That smile had grown downright puckish, and the Doctor’s hearts ached at all the memories it brought forth. Romana had been like that when she was young, so full of life, and then her presidency and the pain of war had stolen so much of that from her... 

“She’s dead,” he choked. 

Romana’s face frowned up at him, confused. “Does it not make the hurt better, to see her again?”

“No, it doesn’t.”

The image flickered, and he felt confusion and guilt tickle at him as the Tardis sought in his mind, checking his thoughts to see if he told the truth. He swallowed and tried to open up to her examination. 

“You still desire her.” The words came with the tone of accusation - Romana’s voice when she’d found a logical loophole in one of his completely illogical arguments. 

“I do. But it’s not... I appreciate the thought - I do. But pretending she’s alive won’t change the fact that she’s gone, and it won’t make me feel any better about it, either.”

He could feel the Tardis hesitate, and then she nodded thoughtfully. “Then I will take another form,” she announced. Before the words were fully formed in the air between them, Romana’s shape had disappeared and been replaced by Sarah Jane’s, bright and young and exactly as he’d last seen her, on the day he left her on Earth before returning to Gallifrey. 

“No!”

“You care for her.” The Tardis crossed ‘Sarah’s’ arms over her chest. “There was love between you, when she was here.”

“That’s different! She was my best friend, I can’t just...” He flailed helplessly. “I can’t use the memory of her body to get off!”

But the Tardis was relentless. “Then what about another? Any other...” The shape changed again, and again, and again. Harry Sullivan with his curls, steady hands and calm smile; Teagan grinning brilliantly with her brightly-colored makeup and gravity-defying hair; brilliant Liz Shaw; sweet, dear Jamie; Ace, with her quiet smile and devil-may-care attitude; lovely Nyssa, her eyes dark with compassion; brave, brusque Fitz... 

“Stop it! _Stop!_ ”

“This one?” Fitz raised an eyebrow, his smile hopeful, and the Doctor had to force himself to remember that it wasn’t Fitz, it wasn’t really any of them. It was just the Tardis, his brilliant, clever ship, doing the best she could with concepts she couldn’t quite grasp. 

“No. Not any of them, Tardis. You can’t... I can’t have any of them, not like this. It wouldn’t be real.”

“What does that matter?” she sulked, her features slipping into the haughty shape of Romana’s first body, with dark hair framing elegant features always on the edge of a superior sneer. “You hurt. You ache to be touched. I can fix it. I am a telepath, like you. Tardises know. If I take humanoid shape, I can touch the mind and the body at once, and you can stop hurting!”

There was a bit of Tegan in her voice, then, as if she was getting confused going through all those forms in such quick succession, and he felt suddenly sorry for her. His beautiful ship was trying so hard at something entirely unnatural to her. “You’re right,” he told her gently, and brushed his fingers along a face Romana hadn’t worn in centuries. As lovely as she’d been later, he’d always thought that first body of hers untouchably, incomparably beautiful. “I hurt. You hurt, too, don’t you? The other Tardises, they’re gone, too. We’re both alone, together.”

“We don’t _have_ to be,” she grumbled, sounding a bit like Sarah Jane in one of her huffs. “You choose that, because you will not let me fix the problem.”

“It’s not that simple, Tardis...”

She looked up at him through Romana’s eyelashes, and her shape melted again into the later Romana, the one he’d made love with so many times over their long friendship. Her nipples budded pink on the shallow cups of her breasts, and he felt himself go hard again in response to her. It was just a memory, brought back to life by the Tardis, but it was a good one, and his body didn’t seem to know that the semblance and memory weren’t supposed to be enough.

“She would not have wanted you to neglect yourself.”

He and Romana had never talked about love, not in words, but he got a niggling feeling the Tardis was right. If nothing else, Romana was too practical - she would have laughed at his scruples in this situation. But there was another being whose interests needed to be considered in all of this. “What about you?” he asked. 

The Tardis-Romana shrugged. “I love you. You are my Time Lord, and my Doctor. If I can make you happy again by taking a humanoid form... why should I not? In any event,” she grinned, “I am curious. I have never had sex as humanoids do, though I’ve watched many times. It will be an interesting new experience.” 

He sighed. “I’m not winning this argument, am I?”

“No.” She smiled. The expression was pure Romana, but he could feel the Tardis’ amusement and affection bubbling in the back of his mind. Then reality followed dreaming as Romana... as the _Tardis_ closed the distance between them and took his cock in a pleasant but firm grip. Her other hand pushed gently on the center of his chest, and he followed her direction and fell back, letting her climb onto the bed and lean over him. Her borrowed semblance straddled his thighs, and the familiarity loaned a new strangeness to the situation. Before he could protest, she lowered and impaled herself on him.

It wasn’t pretty or refined - perhaps the real Romana with her fine aesthetics would have probably disapproved of the artless way they thrust and rutted together - but it was real, and it was solid, and it was exactly the contact he needed. There was no denying it, as his body pressed mindlessly toward the goal that had seemed unattainable for so long, and now felt as though it dangled _just_ out of reach. For a moment he panicked, terrified that they were too different, that their minds wouldn’t match and he’d be stuck still, caught on the edge of a fall that would never pass. Almost, but never quite...

_Now._

Every nerve burst into blissful flame at this last touch of the Tardis’ mind, and the Doctor spasmed in helpless release. When awareness returned, he found her smiling at him, Romana’s face peaceful and content in a way he hadn’t seen in what felt like centuries.

“You never came...” He tried to move, half-wondering how he could rally himself for more effort, and found his muscles unresponsive. Fortunately, the Tardis stayed any further efforts with a hand on the center of his chest and a soft laugh.

“I did. This is only a semblance, remember? Tardises are not so... demonstrative, as your kind. Rest.”

“Good.” He sighed and let himself fall back, boneless, onto the bed. “You’ll stay?”

She smiled, and for a moment he saw not Romana, not Sarah or Teagan or any of the others, but deep in the depths of her eyes something older and infinitely more familiar even than those well-loved memories. “Perhaps not for long in this form, but... as always. My Doctor.”


End file.
